Hello everyone and welcome to your week 13 announcements video. We’ve got quite a few things I want to update you on, so please make sure you go through this video and see everything that’s going on.
First off, some quick announcements about the schedule for this class. Don’t forget that Module 11 on classes is due this Wednesday, November 20th at 5:00 PM. Then you’ll have the next module, Module 12 on inheritance. That module is going to [be] due the week after Thanksgiving, which is December the fourth. Then we have two more modules after that. Module 13 on MVC, which is due the 11th and Module 14 on collections, which is due on the 18th. That is the last module of the class. It’s due on finals week. Modules 12 and 13 will be posted by Wednesday of this week, so you’ll have access to those. Module 14 should be posted either before Thanksgiving or very shortly after Thanksgiving. As soon as I get a chance to finish up the videos for that module. Finally in this class, don’t forget that all late work in this class is going to be due the Friday of finals week, which is December 20th at 11:59 PM. That is absolutely the last date, last possible time that I can accept work for this semester to get a grade in this class.
Some other things that are coming up. This week you’ll be working on the module 11 project. My TA’s recently reviewed that project and told me that it might be super hard. So for the module 11 project, go ahead and do the best you can. Ask questions, visit office hours, work with your GTAs. But if everybody struggles with this project we will adapt a little bit. It’s a little late now for me to go in and adjust the project at this point. So I’m kind of curious to see how everybody else’s experience is; if we need to back off on that project and adjust grades a little bit, we’ll do that. Ss you work through that project, if you have feedback or suggestions of ways we can make that project a little bit easier to work with, go ahead and submit that feedback via Piazza and you can get some of those bug bounty extra credit points in this class.
So going forward, starting this Wednesday, you’ll be working on Module 12. In our testing on Codio, we realized that for some reason the Module 12 stuff wasn’t showing up correctly in the Codio textbooks for my GTAs. So, if you start on the Module 12 tutorial in [Codio] and notice that you don’t see the folders for Module 12 in the file, file tree on the left side of the menu, please post on Piazza and let me and the GTAs know. What we can do in Codio is we will reset your textbook back to the default. So it should load all of that content. Unfortunately, when we do that, it loses all of your current work in the textbook modules. So, if you want to back that up, let us know and we can work with you on that. Your grades will not be affected, so don’t worry about that. We will make sure that you don’t lose any of your textbook grades. But apparently since we’ve been rolling out some new features for the textbook, it doesn’t seem to bring the folders over the way we expect it to. So if you need your textbook reset so you can see Module 12 and 13, please let us know and we can do that.
Another thing we’re looking at is the late penalty in this class. Right now, the currently penalty is 50% of the possible points on all parts of the module if you turn in the last part of the module late. After looking at the grades, I’ve realized that that late penalty is a little bit overbearing and excessive. It’s a little bit heavier than I’d like. And so the proposed late penalty I’m considering is changing it to being only 30% of the possible points deducted from your project grade only. In theory then, if you do completely everything on the module, you get 100% on the module, you can still get a 70% on that assignment, which still gives you a vast majority of the points available even if you get behind and turn stuff in late. So, if you have any comments on this proposed late penalty, please let me know. Most likely after Thanksgiving we will make an official determination if we will update the late penalty. It’s definitely my guess that we will unless we have strong feelings against it. So I will also post this as a poll on Piazza just to get people’s feedback. But please consider this change. I think this is a good change for this class. Just looking at the grades and how things are going to come out.
Finally, we are getting toward the end of the semester. There’s a little bit over a month left. So don’t forget, as I mentioned before, all work in this class must be turned in via Codio, Piazza, Canvas, whatever you’ve got by Friday, December 20th at 11:59. That is the last possible moment that I can accept work because I need to get grades turned in and submitted the following Monday. If you are behind in this class and would like some help getting caught up, please, please contact me to make a catch up plan. I’ve been reaching out to several of you who are a little bit behind trying to figure out how we can best help you get back on track. What I’ve been telling students is I really, really don’t want to fail anybody just because you got behind in this class. I would much rather work with you to help figure out a way that you can pass the class if you’re willing to sit down and complete the work. So if you’re a little bit behind but you want to get caught up and you want to explore some ways we can do that, please contact me and let me know. There are a lot of things I can do as an instructor to flex deadlines, to be pretty lenient on things if you’re willing to put in the time and the effort to get your work done. So don’t be afraid to reach out to me and let me know as we get closer to the end of the semester. I will warn you, if you reach out to me in the middle of dead week or finals week and say, “Hey, I’m five modules behind,” it’s probably a little too late to do much, but if you reach out to me now, while we have a month left, we can come up with a plan that works for both of us.
Other than that, that’s all I’ve got for this week. I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving break next week. You don’t have anything due that week, so you’ve got an extra week to work on Module 12 or get caught up on some modules if you’re a little bit behind. I will be traveling to Texas that week, so I will be in and out of contact, but either myself or my GTAs will be watching Piazza pretty closely, at least Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of the week. We might be a little harder to catch Thursday and Friday as we’re all gone on holiday. If you have any questions or concerns, you can post there, you can email me and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Other than that, enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday and I look forward to seeing you again in December.